-
Third Meditation on Social Media: Segregation , Segmentation & Differing
You may recall that last week we broached the topics “social exclusion” and “social inclusion”. This week I wish to broaden our scope to consider something I’ll call “social diffusion” — and also even broader than that: the entropy of the universe.
Source “Losing the Plot“ Before you object and accuse me of having “lost the plot”, I want reassure you that my very tangential and novice treatment of this very modern and scientifically advanced topic will be extremely brief, superficial, will hardly scratch the surface and most of all: will not hurt (at least not extremely much).
It was not until 1865 that Clausius invented the word entropy as a suitable name for what he had been calling “the transformational content of the body.” The new word made it possible to state the second law in the brief but portentous form: “The entropy of the universe tends toward a maximum,” but Clausius did not view entropy as the basic concept for understanding that law. He preferred to express the physical meaning of the second law in terms of the concept of disgregation, another word that he coined, a concept that never became part of the accepted structure of thermodynamics. [Martin J. Klein, “The Scientific Style of Josiah Willard Gibbs,” in “A Century of Mathematics in America,” 1989]
Search ‘entropy’ on etymonline [ www.etymonline.com/search?q=entropy ]I wish to completely sidestep the past century (or more) of advanced mathematical conceptualizations and instead go immediately to my own “gut-feeling” interpretation of entropy as “the degree of order / disorder that exists” … or even more simply: how “mixed-up” something is. If (as we addressed last week) we wish to include or exclude particular individuals from our social “in-group” vs. “out-group” systems, we would need to till our garden and thereby create order (instead of allowing anything / everything to simply diffuse throughout the ether more / less randomly). Likewise, my hunch is that the vast majority of humans believe that there is indeed some sort of “good” order which is supposedly preferable to some sort of “evil” disorder. Chaos is normally interpreted as the opposite of any goals we aim to reach for (such as plucking an apple from a tree).
Now let me make a quantum leap to the fundamental theoretical thinking about the World-Wide Web. The basic idea is that of a distributed system — ideally, the web is completely decentralized. Just as the “real world” in which I live still seems to be reasonably ordered despite some so-called “laws of nature” maintaining the world is always and everywhere and forever becoming more disordered, so too the World-Wide Web also still seems to have a rather long way to go before anyone could reasonably begin to make a case that it might be even just a little bit decentralized, distributed, whatever. [1]
I feel that starting from these two insights we ought to now consider the historical evolution of our conceptual thinking. Let me just go out on a limb and simply state that “it all started with segregation” (e.g. in the first verses many ancient religious texts, there is some mention of “in the beginning, there was” and then a short list of how things were in a simple and straightforward manner). Since the unraveling of history made things more and more complicated, the world we have now is somewhat more complex. Or at least the world before the scientific revolution cleared it all up, right?
And yet, even though we now luckily have science, that’s not where this story ends.
The new and improved chapter of life is all about segmentation. Everybody wins, because for every purpose under heaven there is a widget. [2]
Yet personally I beg to differ. I don’t need no “slicing and dicing”, thank you very much. I don’t need no very fine print. No dark sarcasm in your trademarks. [3] Your ASS can go SPAM itself. [4]
[1] “Introduction” [ https://phlat.design.blog/2024/01/14/introduction ]
[2] “There’s a Sucker Born Every Minute“
[3] “Rational Media” [ https://phlat.design.blog/2024/01/14/rational-media ]
[4] “ASS: Artificially Sentient Slop“
-
Second Meditation on Social Media [GMTA:] Great Minds Think Alike 🙂
I dedicate this post to a woman named Laura, a quite obviously knowledgeable person I “discovered” a few weeks ago (I guess she is what is “also known as” a “virtual” acquaintance — occupying a space somewhere in between “cyberspace” and “in real life”).
She disclosed to me that I sound sort of “bot-y” to her, so I have included a bot smile :] and also a somewhat more human smile, too, in the title of this post.
Source: https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/get-down-to-brass-tacks.html Yet to get down to brass tacks, I was already planning to write how no algorithm has really done a good job of solving the WWW-SPAM issue, and there Laura comes along and says “R U a BOT ?!?” (LOL)
I do admit that one idea which seems to be rather easily conveyed when using the term “social media” is this notion of “real people” (vs. let’s just mention the notion of “fake news”). There has been much philosophical energy expended on such ideas (see also my own adventures into this space right here on this blog: “Building on Dunbar” 😉 ) … and so it almost seems like we could all begin to talk about “theories” or junk like that … yet to make a long story short being familiar with something also feels familiar somehow … making us more inclined to nod our heads in agreement. Yes?
OK, can I get you on board with the idea that I am NOT a bot? Yes?
Are you beginning to become accustomed agreeing with me? Yes?
Would you like to sign this contract now? No? Why not?
Because you don’t trust some random person writing stuff onto a webpage in his FREE time? Free sounds dirty (as in: dirt cheap), doesn’t it?
Well, OK — I will now abrubtly ABANDON that train of thought before we all get derailed.
What I actually wanted to point out today is that if we were well acquainted, then we might actually think similarly about many things. We would, for example, presumably speak the same language (or at least very similar languages — as Kings and politicians are often also quite quick to point out). We would be and feel familiar with all sorts of stuff. It could really become quite cozy. And all of that would make it much more enjoyable and a far more effective way to annihilate stuff like SPAM and ASS [1] and stuff almost everyone agrees is ugly, vile, pernicious, obsessed and deranged … — but I digress.
[1] See “ASS: Artificially Sentient Slop“
-
First Meditation on Social Media: Let’s Get Social
“Social Media” is a term for which there is no consensus regarding its definition. Last week, while writing “Push + Pull” [ https://fuckwith.news.blog/2026/04/22/push-pull ], I also (sort of haphazardly) discovered a blog / website at heidicohen.com which appears to be defunct now. That site includes a post in which many who seem to claim to be something like “social media experts” were asked to offer a definition of the term. Most of these experts failed miserably — the vast majority did not even muster scratching together something which could even qualify as a definition, but a very small few actually managed to at least make some amusing statements. For example, Heidi Cohen herself contributed this very well crafted morsel:
Social Media are the platforms that enable the interactive web. They do so by engaging users to participate in, comment on and create content as means of communicating with their social graph, other users and the public.
https://heidicohen.com/social-media-definitionI would say that she deserves brownie points for being grammatically correct that the word “media” seems to denote a plural phenomenon.
Mary Mccoy “Let’s Get Social” Since this is (hopefully) the beginning of a series of meditations, I think it’s entirely appropriate to get back to “Square #1”. So let’s try to clue the “newbies” (let’s say anyone born since the turn of the millennium) how “social media” came about.
At the turn of the millennium, the “Web” world was sort of in disarray. Search had not been “solved”, but even more important to the traditional publishing industry was the fact that their entire business model looked very much doomed to collapse because of what was “going on” (and I was very prone to quoting Marvin Gaye back then 😉 ).
Then the “dotcom crash” happened (I actually prefer to call it the “dot crash”, as I still see the “dotcom crash” looming in the future). After all of the rubble was rubbed away, the Google Guys got up on stage and declared that they had solved search. Perhaps there were also a few backroom deals going on, and then what emerged was an IPO with much fanfare … and ultimately Google owning the entire online advertising industry (if you’re a newb, you might want to try “looking up” something that used to be called “DoubleClick”). Another hiccup that happened at that time was that Google devised a new algorithm that satisfied Wall Street, Madison Ave and almost every other location from the Redwood Forest to the New York Island (and perhaps even beyond … ). In case you newbs want some extra credit: try looking up the “nofollow” tag … which essentially invalidated a very large part to WWW communications and simply declared this information to be worthless.
This was of course hunky-dory for the very short-sighted publishing industry. Little did they know that they would soon be working for table scraps and would otherwise also become entirely superfluous.
Pretty much the only thing that has changed since then is this phenomenon many people refer to as “social media”, yet which no one seems able to provide a definition for. Ironically, many in the aforementioned “newbie” generation often use technology referred to as “social media” for search.
Which brings me to one of the main points I wish to, um, point out: Search has not been solved. Not completely. And maybe not even one iota (see e.g. “This is just a load of crap” [ https://podcasts.video.blog/2022/01/08/this-is-just-a-load-of-crap ] ).
A quarter century ago the Google Guys came out waving their arms and spraying bottles of champagne, and all we got was “suckered“. [1]
That said, I think hardly anyone has actually realized this. The myth that search has been solved (and that the answer is Google) is very much alive and kicking. Let me explain it this way: Who do you want to pay today? (I guess maybe I should also explain to the newbs that this sounds very much like an advertisement that Microsoft actually did a while back).
For many people, the answer to this question seems simple and straightforward (see also “If Google is the Pope of the Internet, Then Who Are You & I?“). Again ironically, the messaging from Google sometimes seems different (see “Google can’t answer question about using Google (or NOT)” [ https://search.tech.blog/2025/06/10/google-cant-answer-question-about-using-google-or-not ] ).
[1] ps: see also “There’s a Sucker Born Every Minute“
-
Whatever happened to intellectual property rights?
This question was recently raised by an excellent thinker and writer I follow (stalk?) on the Internet. Unfortunately, the vast majority of people who use the Internet are by and large unaware that they have sold pretty much all their data (see e.g. “All Your Data Are More Free to Us” or in case that isn’t clear enough try watching the documentary I quoted in “Us OR Them — Whose Job is it to GTFO?” 😉 ) for “free” services they could easily get without selling all their so-called “intellectual property” (as I do for just a few pennies per month). [1]
Although this was just a tangential remark, I wish to expound on it as a foundation to addressing the main topic.
Intellectual property rights are a very newfangled gimmick. Shakespeare had no intellectual property rights. Neither God nor Jesus enforced any intellectual property rights. Socrates preferred to drink poison and suffer a painful death over arguing with simpleton Greek lawyers. Everything we say day in and day out has probably been said before over the many millennia of history which separate our intellectual species from merely more or less sapient humans.
And yet there exist vast publishing companies who can’t seem to have enough intellectual property lawyers willing to stick their noses into all sorts of hard-to-reach places around the clock (yet who will nonetheless charge double the regularly overpriced rates for any inconveniences they can dream up or at least justify according to industry standards).
These are the kinds of companies who are happy to create contractual arrangements for their so-called “free” products and services … and people who are not literate enough to read all the small print are the kinds of suckers who will gladly agree to such contractual arrangements. My hunch is that this population includes innumerable drunkards, drug-addled zombies and wide variety of mental patients.
Some people might refer to such folks as irrational, but I prefer to focus on the media companies they typically become contractually enslaved to. These companies use “made up” names that are completely meaningless and which are used for what many people might refer to as “doing business“. One particular breed of intellectual property lawyers, namely the so-called “trademark” lawyer, specializes in enforcing such businesses’ supposed intellectual property rights (which, as I pointed out above, are anything but God-given).
These irrational media companies [2] have been very busy collecting decades of data from large populations of suckers including untold numbers of imbeciles and have in the meantime worked out a strategy of building so-called “artificial intelligence” out of these immense tanks of slop.
Since these wizard-like irrational media companies have a lot of experience in converting poor suckers into poor slaves to their machines, they probably feel they can do so over and over again and now aim to “sell” their poor machinery to evermore (including some “new and improved”) illiterate masses.
Which brings me back to the main topic:
Source: https://bambooandbananas.org/truth-in-writing-ai-and-the-collapse-of-communication This shit is depressing. In a world where everyone has a motive in their stories, in their fake pictures and fake images, I don’t want to talk to anyone or see anything posed as real. It’s probably not.
https://bambooandbananas.org/truth-in-writing-ai-and-the-collapse-of-communication[1] I find it unfathomable that there are still people who believe in “free lunch” gimmicks. The only way to get something for free is by enslaving someone (or something — such as the price of energy, and my father’s story about how crazy [or simply stupid] people would incessantly repeat how energy was now “too cheap to meter” never gets old)
[2] cf. “Rational Media” [ https://phlat.design.blog/2024/01/14/rational-media ]
-
Waking Up to Basic Literacy Skills
A little over a week ago, I was yet again reminded of how poor the literacy skills of most people — even in some of the most “technologically advanced” countries on Earth — are. Indeed, this is perhaps best depicted in the movie “Idiocracy”, which I have often quoted on this blog already. [1]
My entire approach to information is very heavily reliant on literacy skills (sometimes basic literacy skills, sometimes somewhat more advanced literacy skills). There is little doubt in my mind that the apparently afflicted person lacking basic literacy skills in my most recent experience of this phenomenon would feel outright sanctified had her image appeared on the homepage of Google (or some other “prominent” or similarly “mainstream” irrational media website). [2]
Source: https://wants.blog/2026/04/01/the-moment-writing-starts-to-feel-like-an-obligation-rather-than-something-i-want-to-do-the-entire-exercise-loses-its-purpose In our times, “coming across” as literate oftens seems worthy of ridicule … most probably because such large portions of so many populations seem so severely lacking in such skills. Oddly, while the “cool” folks acknowledge that some of the most prominent leaders ever were undoubtedly among the most literate people ever … nonetheless they succumb to appealing to some Pope-like figure to absolve them of their own sins of illiteracy. [3]
Note, however, that even the Roman Catholic Church has resigned itself (at least for the time being) from its previous “infallibility” doctrine. [4]
Undaunted, the aspiring “tech giants” boldly continue to embark on missions to even greater heights, apparently making up their own laws along the way. And an ample supply of willing suckers line up to roll out their rugs and pay homage to the intimidatingly rising floods of AI slop at least 5 times a day (if not even 5 times a minute). [5]
[1] One of my most recent experiences of people lacking basic literacy skills is documented in “The moment writing starts to feel like an obligation rather than something I want to do, the entire exercise loses its purpose” [ https://wants.blog/2026/04/01/the-moment-writing-starts-to-feel-like-an-obligation-rather-than-something-i-want-to-do-the-entire-exercise-loses-its-purpose ]; for more about “Idiocracy”, see e.g. “More about Modes and Levels of Literacy“
[2] See “Rational Media” [ https://phlat.design.blog/2024/01/14/rational-media ] and also “Inter-Reliance, Self-Dependence &Â Responsibility“
[3] See “If Google is the Pope of the Internet, Then Who Are You &Â I?“
[4] For more about this aspect of “infallibility”, please see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infallibility#Christianity
[5] See also “There’s a Sucker Born Every Minute“
-
Let Me Take You to the Beach
This is actually a song title of Frank Zappa’s — I can’t remember the lyrics right now, and I’m too lazy to go dig it up out of my archives … but I will say that I recall them as rather empty.
My mind is also sort of empty right now. The mainstream propaganda machinery is churning out such immense amounts of hogwash that there almost seems to be no alternative to tuning out (or whatever that Tim Leery phrase is).
Mainstream has an odd way of sounding significant. In reality it is about as significant as a hot air balloon, which seems like a rather timely metaphor as the whole world seems to running out of gas (or whatever).
I bet you, my dear reader, are becoming a little sick and tired of seeming this and seeming that, and you’re seemingly itching for some good old fashioned hard data. OK, here ya go …
Mainstream Media, Brought to you by Google This graphic might almost lead you to believe that “Black Out with My Rack Out” (see also “Black Out with My Rack Out” 😉 ) was being talked about [1] quite a lot before “Spring Break” … and it wasn’t until much later that the phrase made headlines in the mainstream news media — isn’t that odd?
That’s it for this week — Happy Holidays! 😀
[1] or at least “searched for” (albeit predominantly by people with rather limited literacy skills 😉 )
-
“Black Out with My Rack Out”
Is “Spring Break” a rational or an irrational event? In any case, it almost seems to be a calculated irrational media event — and the quote in the title seems like a clever invitation to “click here”. [1]
Source: https://torontosun.com/news/world/reporter-digs-up-most-clueless-spring-breakers-in-bewildering-beach-interviews One thing that I believe Milton Friedman may have overlooked in his “Free to Choose” analysis, is that choosing is never completely free … because such freedom requires a sort of “cognitive tax” to think (i.e., to invoke rationality). For example, if I were to want to drink only the best mineral water, then I would need to apply some sort of algorithm in order to determine which water is actually “best” … and indeed: in different circumstances, this might even require various different measurement criteria.
Most modern search engines purport to resolve such complex issues by simply maximizing profit. As long as a sucker is willing to click on a result for which the search engine collects revenue (whether directly or indirectly), that result will probably “pass the test”.
In contrast, rational media involve the inputs of much larger communities of participants. All potentially interested parties engage with other participants by speaking the same language and employing rational behavior (which requires effort). They willingly do so mostly because the results are far more reliable than the results obtained from the far less intellectually taxing irrational media.
To pretend that the freedom to choose does not come at a cost would be very naive — perhaps even ignorant. It is far easier to simply consume a “mainstream” religion than to choose a belief of your own. [2]
In any case, if there is one thing I am fairly certain of then that is that the vast majority of people lack the literacy skills required to employ rational media as a method for acquiring reliable information. They did not learn them — whether in school, in college, at a university or any other educational institution. [3]
Therefore, I have chosen to begin work on devising some “training wheels” for people who seem rather clueless or simply unskilled or whatever (indeed, including most of my friends and family, who seem to feign stupidity or for some reason are simply not as literate as the thousands of people who follow my blogs and the many thousands more who simply come across them by applying rational media methodology).
This what I have come up with so far. I have created a site ( classified.news.blog [ https://classified.news.blog ] ) where people can promote different kinds of news, each according to their own preferred categories of information. For me the main categories of information are simply whether the information is of local or global relevance. Most of the information I consider to be important is global in nature — you can see the page I have set up for such “global news” @ https://classified.news.blog/classifieds/nmw-classification/nmw-global (this is just the beginning, I have many more sites to include … and at some point I may also create more categories).
If someone has any feedback (whether positive or negative — I consider it all to be constructive 😉 ), then please feel free to comment below!
Thank you for your attention to this matter!
[1] See e.g. Denette Wilford, “Reporter digs up most clueless spring breakers in bewildering beach interviews: ‘BLACK OUT WITH MY RACK OUT’ ” (Toronto Sun, 24 March 2026); For more about the distinction between rational media vs. irrational media, see “Rational Media” [ https://phlat.design.blog/2024/01/14/rational-media ]
[2] I have a hunch that very few researchers “freely” choose to apply scientific methods such as experimental designs or statistical analyses. My hunch is that the vast majority of researchers simply employ such approaches as “dogma”; See also “If Google is the Pope of the Internet, Then Who Are You &Â I?“
[3] For more about the complex sociological reasons behind the decrepit state of educational systems, please see “Human Brain Conditioner” (and other articles tagged “Human Brain Conditioner“)
-
Nationalist Mainstreams
The degree to which other people might not be aware the things someone believes are central “mainstream” topics should not be underestimated.
For example, how many people in Iran actually believe that whatever a so-called “media outlet” in the United States matters to the reality of the everyday life of an ordinary or average (Iranian) human being? Probably nil. How many of the many billions of people worldwide (including Chinese, Russians, Ukranians, Africans, Europeans, Muslims, Buddhists and whatnot else) actually tune in to some such so-called “media outlet” in the United States on a daily basis? Or once a week? Once a month? Once a year? Or ever? The number “nil” might not be all too far-fetched.
Even more: who in their right mind would ever believe some person somewhere on Earth might tune in to this or that brand name media rag? Populist propaganda brought to you by your so-called “trusted news source“? Are you kidding me?
The United States of America, in particular is a special case world-wide. Unlike in the “Rest of the World”, in the USA the role of state-sponsored media is relatively small. On the other hand, in the wild west, advertising-sponsored media runs rampant. Although the propaganda machinery is likewise at work, the information flows are significantly different.
Source: www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/out-of-sight-out-of-mind.html -
Stages in the Transformation of Information from Writing Communities to Written Words
I acknowledge that the title I have chosen is rather broad. So I think I’d like to start off by sketching out the landscape, sort of painting a picture using very broad brush strokes … and then perhaps to suggest one case study in order to begin to flesh out more details.
The entire Internet (well, at least the Internet I am aware of) is governed by rules and regulations. Some parts moreso than others, but for every “user” the very first decision they must make is which set of rules and regulations to choose. For many decades, perhaps even ever since someone actually remembers making such a decision, this choice was rather simple and straightforward:
Always choose .COM
Advice repeated so often it ought make people sick to hear it yet againI will now jump to the chase and simply point out that many people similarly choose Google or Facebook or Youtube or Spotify or Microsoft or Linux or Grok or Anthropic or whatever other sort of “solution” to a rather complex set of issues to select an environment in which to engage … with a community of people who have made the same (or at least similar enough) choices to whatever they have chosen themselves … essentially “choosing a playing field”.
The playing field is essentially the environment for all interaction with information. Indeed, most people who are active at all will probably be active among many playing fields, and many if not outright most people will not even realize that each of these playing fields has quite restrictive limitations, and / or that none of these playing fields are equivalent to TEH INTERNET.
Now (as an example, and maybe also as the beginning of a sort of “case study”) I will focus on one such playing field: WordPress.
WordPress is probably the largest online community devoted to the written word. I am actually not sure whether the community is first and foremost about “open source” or whether the “open source” aspects or WordPress are the result of its community’s very strong enthusiasm for creativity and creative expression in any and all forms. At this point, the project seems so humungous, that saying almost anything about it reminds me of that image of a blindfolded scientist who is unable to tell whether they are touching an elephant’s trunk or tail.
Source: The blind and the elephant – Sketchplanations [ http://sketchplanations.com/the-blind-and-the-elephant ] My gut feeling is that whereas at least 99% of the users of WordPress use it to publish, at most 1% users of WordPress use it to read. I say that even though I know that WordPress content is actually dynamically “created” ever time someone enter the address to view content hosted using WordPress. In my humble opinion, that is roughly equivalent to pointing out that users of printed paper documents use a light source to read them. This distinction between literacy skills and publicacy skills is usually incomprehensible to most of my audiences. [1]
Even though I notice that some in the WordPress community are enthusiastic about their engagement and participation in the community, I also notice that the technological support for such communicative engagement and participation is luckluster at best and usually rather suboptimal and sometimes even quite shoddy. One good example of this is the way RSS feeds are propagated throughout WordPress’s own systems. Some RSS feeds seem to be updated more frequently than others, resulting in non-level playing fields among community members seeking to engage and participate level playing fields. Nonetheless, I am still optimistic enough to feel that when I am able to bring this (“bug”?) to the attention of people responsible for the regulation of WordPress technology, they will address the issue and maybe even fix it. 🙂
[1] In case you feel you may be a “special case”, please consider reading “What is Publicacy + Why does it Matter?” (and / or other posts tagged “publicacy“)
-
Imaginary Relationships
I guess you could think of Bob Dylan’s “Every Grain of Sand” (which he played as an encore when I attended a concert of his just a few months ago) …
Photo by Kindel Media on Pexels.com As it is (IRL — more or less), I currently have Andy Summers’ album “The Golden Wire” (1989) playing in my headphones. 🙂
Whether sound files or image files or simply plain text or whatever else, all of the content you are currently consuming via this channel is more or less imaginary. It is “appearing” on your screen (or through the speakers, or headphones, etc.). In contrast, if we were at a real beach, we could watch every grain of sand slip through our fingers and fall to the ground, as we have once before. Or maybe twice. Three times? Thousands? Millions? … ?
Probably many times before. Iteration upon iteration. Repetition. More reps. Many many more reps. Each and every grain of sand left an impression. Grains of sand slip through the cracks, they all fall down to the ground. And we watch as they do so.
That was the world before the Internet. That’s still the world the way it is today. But something has also changed. Today, there is also this text, these images, these sound files, these updates, these algorithms, apps, … and lots and lots and lots and many more lots of ASS (artificially sentient slop). It’s like the slime oozing out of your TV set (as Frank Zappa used to say or sing or whatever).
Hundreds of years ago, Henry David Thoreau lamented that people lead lives of quiet desperation. I believe that’s no longer the case. I think we have moved on beyond such despair. Today (in so-called “advanced” economies), people increasingly lead lives of imaginary relationships. Many people can no longer identify when some content they are “consuming” is completely imaginary. The words and images and whatnot more they consume on a daily basis are often entirely fabricated and have no relationship at all to what we might have formerly referred to as “reality“.
An entire generation of largely illiterate youngsters bark into their so-called “smartphones” … and actually believe that what the device responds has something to do with “facts”, “the real world”, “logic”, “truth” or anything like that … besides making a buck off of these poor little suckers.
Social Business (WordPress weblog)
Socio Business blog 